FLARE is a modular system designed to provide buildings with a non-rigid, interactive and communicative "skin" - unlike those old-fashioned rigid walls you use on your buildings. See the FLARE video below.
(FLARE pneumatic building facade)
As far as I know, FLARE is only a concept system designed by Christopher Bauder and Christian Perstl; however, here is the basic idea.
The FLARE system consists of a number of tiltable metal flake bodies supplemented by individually controllable pneumatic cylinders.
FLARE is a modular system to create a dynamic hull for facades or any building or wall surface. Acting like a living skin, it allows a building to express, communicate and interact with its environment.
Each metal flake reflects the bright sky or sunlight when in vertical standby position.
When the flake is tilted downwards by a computer controlled pneumatic piston, its face is shaded from the sky light and this way appears as a dark pixel.
The building's appearance as a whole would be controlled by a single computer in charge of surface animation.
As long as we're working with concepts, how about a flexible building with flexible walls? Like J.G. Ballard's psychotropic houses with plastex walls:
It was a beautiful room all right, with opaque plastex walls and white fluo-glass ceiling, but something terrible had happened there. As it responded to me, the ceiling lifting slightly and the walls growing less opaque, reflecting my perspective-seeking eye, I noticed that curious mottled knots were forming, indicating where the room had been strained and healed faultily...
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